Tennis notebook: Listening in on the ground floor

St. John recalls announcement that launched the precursor to women's tour

DALE ROBERTSON, Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle

Published 5:30 am, Thursday, October 14, 2010

Best she can recall, Terry St. John had never even been to a news conference until the Houston Racquet Club asked her to organize one ASAP. It had something to do with a little women's professional tournament the club had agreed to host for someone named Gladys Heldman.

"I knew tennis," recalls St. John, who was employed by the then-new Racquet Club to write its monthly newsletter. "But I was clueless about the politics of tennis. And I'd never met Gladys."

This happened 40 years and a couple of weeks ago, in late September 1970. Heldman, the publisher of World Tennis, had just moved to Houston from New York, and her daughter, Julie, ranked among the best players on the women's amateur circuit. Having been rebuffed by the promoters of the fledging men's pro Tour to throw a few bucks toward "the ladies," Heldman had taken matters into her own hands.

She signed Julie and eight other women — Billie Jean King the most prominent among them — to $1 contracts and got Phillip Morris to underwrite the inaugural Virginia Slims of Houston's $7,500 purse as a way to market the cigarettes to women, if you can imagine. All this would be announced at St. John's news conference at the Racquet Club.

"But it started over an hour late because the players and Gladys were down in the basement still negotiating, I guess," St. John said. "I was afraid everybody was going to leave."

A curious throng of writers and broadcasters did show up. But one of the TV stations failed to send a reporter. Later, St. John said, "Somebody at the station called to bawl me out for having not explained the significance of the event to him. But I didn't know how significant it was at the time myself."

The tournament would be won by Rosie Casals. She defeated Judy Dalton in the final, after Dalton had knocked out King, who was playing for the first time following knee surgery.

It spawned a tour with 19 other stops the following year, offering combined prize money of $309,100 and eventually paving the way for the WTA Tour. Last week in Beijing, the women played for $4.5 million.

As for St. John, she has presided over countless news conferences in the following years, handling media for the Houston women's event into the 1990s and also running the press room at the River Oak's men's tournament for a number of years.

Youth represented

Four of the 12 winners in the 2009-10 National Junior Tennis and Learning National Student Athlete Competition are from the Zina Garrison Academy.

Geethicka Doddipalli placed first in the Middle School Boys category and won a $5,000 scholarship. The others are Jingie Ling, who earned a $2,500 scholarship for finishing second among middle school boys; Tuong Hoang, who took second among the high school boys and received $2,500; and Monica Elizondo, who was third among middle school girls and won $1,000.

The USTA reports that 10 other Garrison Academy kids finished among the top 25, a remarkable showing for a single organization. The 12-month point-based competition gave thousands of inner-city youths in grades 5-12 the opportunity to compete in the USTA-sanctioned tournaments. Their grades in school were also factored in.

Worth the recognition

Three Houston teams won USTA Texas League or Sectional Championships to advance to Nationals. The men's 50s 4.5 team, captained by Jimmy Kilshaw, and the women's senior 4.5 team, captained by Rox Ann Schanzenbach, are off to Indian Wells, Calif., this week. The 4.0 team, captained by Ron Fisher and Mike Spoor, will play at Rancho Mirage, Calif., at the end of October.